East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Imaginary Girls

Yesterday’s short bits about cities as people reminded me one of my old – very old – projects that went nowhere.
I’ve got a few of those.
The project was called Imaginary Girls, and it was partially inspired by a song by a long gone band called Danny Wilson, called – you guessed it – Imaginary Girl

He said an imaginary girl
Is so exciting
Marry an imaginary girl
And you need nothing
In writing

The idea was to write a series of drabbles, based on a series of photographs.
In case you missed it (quoth Wikipedia)

A drabble is a short work of fiction of one hundred words in length. The purpose of the drabble is brevity, testing the author’s ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in a confined space.

The term, turns out, was taken from a Monty Python book.

So that was the plan – a series of photos, and a set of 100-words pieces about invented women.
I even had a folder with black and white photographs found on Pinterest, that got deleted during one of my various computer cataclysms.
I still think it’s a worthy idea – and I still think that black and white images would work best.

And incidentally, while I was looking up that definition of drabble, Wikipedia pulled me in a side alley, shushed me and showed me something else… 55 Fiction

A literary work will be considered 55 Fiction if it has:

55 words or fewer, however some publishers actually require exactly 55 words – no more and no less;
A setting;
One or more characters;
Some conflict; and
A resolution. (Not limited to the moral of the story)

The title of the story is not part of the overall word count, but it still cannot exceed seven words.

And this is also interesting.
But 55 words are very tight – I still prefer the 100-words form, that is the one I used, more or less, for my Four Cities.

Is this whole thing worth pursuing?
Could I put together in time a collection of 55 Fiction stories, or drabbles, based on that original concept?
Would somebody really read them?

It would certainly be a good exercise, and it might help develop characters for longer stories. And it would be a fun way to take my mind off my problems while relaxing. The word-based equivalent of doodling.
It might also work as a project on Medium (you might remember I am fascinated by the platform and would love to do something with it), and I am sure my Patrons might be interested in this sort of playful writing thing.

What do you guys think, out there?
Is it time to resurrect my Imaginary Girls?